BENGALURU: With discounts, instant credit, no cost EMIs and cashback offers, e-commerce retailers have made this ongoing festive season sale for shoppers almost impossible to resist.
E-commerce companies have tied up with many banks to offer discounts to shoppers. Homegrown e-commerce marketplace Flipkart’s annual flagship event The Big Billion Days (TBBD) 2024 is on till October 6, and the company has partnered with HDFC bank to offer customers 10% off on debit cards, credit cards and EMI transactions.
Flipkart Axis Bank Credit Card will also offer 5% Unlimited Cashback and customers can avail instant credit and No cost EMIs with Flipkart Pay Later, the ecommerce firm said. It also offers daily cashback for customers using Flipkart UPI.
The Flipkart Group includes Myntra, Flipkart Wholesale, Flipkart Health+, and Cleartrip. As part of the festive season sale, for air travel, Cleartrip will provide special fares for international destinations starting at R5,999 and domestic destinations from R999.
Over 33 crore user visits were recorded on the e-commerce platform during early access and day 1 (September 26, 27). It said, the co-branded card witnessed a spike of 20X in overall spends and 8X transactions when compared to the non-sale days. Flipkart Pay Later EMI witnessed a 8.5X spike in the daily transactions run rate compared to the pre-TBBD period. The third party EMI usage grew by 27x in spends and 18X in transactions compared to the daily run rate.
Experts said as e-commerce companies offer more deals and discounts, there has been an increase in the number of shoppers.
About 120 million people visited Myntra platform during early access and day 1 of the Big Fashion Festival. It witnessed 15X new users over BAU (Business As Usual) joining the platform, and a 2X spike in OPM (orders per minute) at peak over last year, in the opening hour of the event.
“We are also seeing a notable demand coming from both metros and non-metros, with approximately 45% of orders coming from Tier 2 & 3 cities and beyond,” Neha Wali, Head of Revenue, Myntra said. SoftBank-backed e-commerce company Meesho, which kicked off its annual Meesho Mega Blockbuster Sale on September 27, said nearly 6.5 crore customers visited the platform on Day 1. Megha Agarwal, General Manager, Business at Meesho, said, the platform achieved a record-breaking feat of doubling its Day 1 orders over last year.
Meesho Mall also grew 2.5X in orders over last year. Meesho has announced several initiatives including customer refunds instantly. On an average, the majority of users now receive their refunds in 5 minutes, it said. Amazon Great Indian Festival 2024 kick-started on September 27.
It said customers can avail 10% discount with SBI Debit and Credit Cards. Up to 50-80% off on Fashion & Beauty across 4.5 lakh styles, and minimum 50% off on Kitchen, Home and Outdoors products, Amazon said.
Jewellery item stocks up
Data analysed by e-commerce enablement SaaS platform Unicommerce reveals that while inventory levels have increased across multiple categories over the last three months, June - August 2024, the build-up of the inventory is significantly higher for many categories. It said brands across footwear, electronic wearables, kitchenware and home furnishings & decor categories have increased their inventories by over 55%, 33%, 30% and 26% respectively during this period.
Jewellery and healthy snack sub-categories have shown the highest increase in inventory. Stocks of jewellery items have grown by over 100%, while stocks of healthy snacks are up over 75%.
Surge in job creation
Apart from various offers, the festive sale is also promising as it creates job opportunities. Sachin Alug, CEO of NLB Services, highlighted that roles such as delivery drivers,
customer service representatives, tech support specialists, and freelance designers are expected to experience the highest demand.
Salaries for these positions, currently ranging between R12,000 and R16,000, are projected to rise by 10-20% over the next 3-4 months, driven by the surge in demand.
While last year saw the addition of approximately 500,000 temporary and gig jobs, this year, he anticipates even greater growth, with over 1 million temporary jobs expected.
“This rise is driven by factors such as booming e-commerce activity, the expansion of the gig economy, and heightened consumer demand during the festival season,” he said.